Saturday, December 29, 2012

Russia: More of the Same

By Maysaloon

"Firstly the conundrum regarding Russia's "changing" position is not something I
give much importance to. The Russian and Iranian stance advocating "political
dialogue" is a game of double speak which only re-iterates the narrative that
Assad's regime has been propagating since the start of the revolution......

Rise of the Warlords

What I do want to talk about is
something far more pressing, the shape of Syria after Assad goes. More and more
of the discussion about Syria focuses less on the regime than on the security
situation and the emergence of warlords in the country. But the creation of
these warlords is not the only legacy that the Assad regime will leave Syria.
The "day after" his regime falls, I have no doubt that we will continue to see
car bomb explosions and kidnappings throughout the country. This will magnify
the "Syrian catastrophe" that Assad's allies abroad will start to trumpet on
about, but this should not dissuade Syrians from the path that they have chosen.
I wrote at the start of the revolution that if Syrians wanted their freedom,
then this will be a long and difficult path. Perhaps nobody expected the level
of barbarism that Assad junior turned out to be capable of, but it was always
naive for anybody to expect political reforms and sincere dialogue to emerge
simply because of initially peaceful protests.....

The Political Battle

Politically, it seems to me a fact now
that the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood are the only opposition group that is
organised and of any kind of size. I don't know how popular they are
domestically, but the hysteria surrounding them is disproportionate to their
political abilities and foresight. Some people seem to think that if they have
any kind of strength in a future Syria then the country will become an Islamic
state, which is utter nonsense. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood are far more
powerful, intelligent - relatively speaking - and organised than the Syrian
Muslim Brotherhood could ever hope to be, and they have not had the easiest time
governing in Egypt. Unlike during the age of dictatorship, it is no longer
possible in many post-Arab Spring countries to govern without consent.....

We should also note that regimes which were labelled "anti-imperialist" have
been far more brutal and savage in their repression of the revolutions than the
"pro-Western" camp of countries such as Tunisia, Egypt or even Yemen. In Yemen
the Saleh regime, apart from being incomparably stupid and incompetent, was also
much more hesitant in fighting an armed population that was mobilizing the most
wonderful mass rallies on a weekly if not daily basis. In contrast, the
populations of countries that were nominally "anti-imperialist" were brutalised
almost from the start and this was because they had no weapons and there was
also nobody to restrain the Gaddafi and Assad regimes. This is something that
students of politics must not ignore; whatever attraction Arab anti-imperialism
once might have had, it is no more. ......."Hezbullah in Lebanon might still try to revive this sentiment, but the group's preferential treatment of Bahrain's revolution at the expense of Syria's has shattered the trust placed in it by many, including myself

"Recent reports from inside
Syria paint a grim picture on
both sides. In Aleppo, as my Guardian colleague Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
described in a vivid
report last week, the armed opposition to President Bashar al-Assad
remains as split as ever, looting is commonplace and rivalries are multiplying.
In Damascus, the situation for Assad and his inner circle continues to
deteriorate. The president himself, suggest some accounts, is "isolated and
fearful", almost invisible and unwilling to venture outside. The operational
capacity of the forces closest to him to mount operations is also declining even
as Russia seems to be moving to distance itself from Assad, if not from Syria
itself.

In all likelihood, some end to the regime appears inevitable, if not
immediately, then in the not very distant future. The question now being posed
is: what happens next? And while the desire to predict and second-guess is
hard-wired into our natures, not least the nature of journalists and analysts,
it's probable that we will get it badly wrong.

The tools most commonly
used to try to explain complex situations such as conflict, including the
predilection for historical analogy to explain current events, are often deeply
misleading, as the impressive Kings
of War blog of the Department of War Studies at King's College, London
cautioned before Christmas. The reality is that the Middle East is not the
Balkans of the 1990s, nor is Egypt revolutionary Iran. "The
truth," the Kings of War concluded, "is we should probably not be surprised by
the things that surprise us.".....

What we can say about the Arab Spring is not where we may end up, but where
we are now – and that is in the midst of a grand reshaping of all the regional
assumptions that have stood for almost a generation.

Its dominant feature so far
has been the rise of a different kind of political Islam shaped, by and large,
by the Muslim Brotherhood
as an international phenomenon. For all that, it is still hard to generalise
about the different manifestations of the Brotherhood. Hamas, the Palestinian offshoot
in Gaza, is the way it is because it has been formed by its experience of armed
struggle, just as the Brotherhood in Egypt has been shaped by its
own history.

In Egypt, as Michael Wahid
Hanna argued in Foreign Policy in November, what this has produced is
an "ambush" style of decision-making under President Mohamed Morsi, an
approach that lacks consensus and consultation. While "not anti-democratic per
se," argues Hanna, this approach "depends upon a distinctive conception of
winner-takes-all politics and the denigration of political opposition. Winning
elections, by this perspective, entitles the victors to govern unchecked by the
concerns of the losers".

A second phenomenon has
been the increasing activism of the Gulf states, not least Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The various
axes of Qatari influence, money and assistance – some formal, some informal –
have become another key feature of the Arab Spring, not least in Libya and
Syria. Its motivation in supporting revolutions elsewhere has been described in
private, by at least one senior member of an Arab regime it has irritated, as a
cynical attempt by its royal rulers "to be in the kitchen but not on the menu".
That is, to inoculate themselves against internal threats.

A third key feature,
overlapping with the second, and perhaps the most serious, has been the
continuing rise of Sunni-Shia sectarian antagonism in the region. As Egypt,
Qatar and Turkey have emerged as the focus of an emerging and powerful Sunni
axis of influence, it has set them in opposition to an increasingly isolated
Iran, whose own attempts to build its influence in the region, not least through
its alliances with Hezbollah and Assad's
Syria, now appear at risk.....

If it is a truism in military circles that "generals are always preparing to
fight the last war", then it is equally true in foreign policy circles. And if
there is one overarching lesson of the Arab Spring it is that we should be
attentive to the present and its challenges, not chained to notions of the past
or bound by ideas of a future we cannot know."

(CNN) -- Russia's top diplomat and an international envoy to Syria warned Saturday that the Middle East nation's conflict is becoming more militarized and sectarian, further endangering the region.

The statements came on what may be the bloodiest day since the unrest's start 21 months ago: At least 392 people were killed Saturday, the opposition Local Coordination Committees said. The toll includes 201 people who a captured Syrian soldier said had been executed in Deir Balbah, outside of Homs, after Syrian forces won a battle there, an LCC spokesman said.

The Syrian government has not commented on the Deir Balbah allegations, and CNN cannot independently confirm casualty reports as Syria's government has severely restricted access to the country.

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Lakhdar Brahimi, the joint U.N.-Arab League envoy, held a meeting aimed at halting any such violence by bringing both sides to the negotiating table.

Brahimi warned the civil war was devolving into fighting between factions jostling for power, rather than an effort centered on bettering the lives of all Syrians. [Ibrahimi is stooge and a liar]

"In central Iraq, a number of arrests have provoked mass protests in two major cities. Will these latest protests lead to renewed sectarian violence? Guests: Saad al-Muttalibi, Anas al-Tikriti, Hiwa Osman."

Diplomats and journalists say they are being pressured to abandon their
opposition of the president

(Cartoon by Carlos Latuff)

Ahram Online

"Some Egyptian diplomats and media personnel have complained that they are being
pressured by their bosses into refraining from criticising Egypt president
Mohamed Morsi.

Opposition forces have frequently accused Morsi of attempting to curb
freedoms since the influential Muslim Brotherhood group propelled him into
office in Egypt's first freely contested elections earlier this year.
“I was summoned into the office of the assistant (foreign) minister; he said
we were all partners in making the (January) Revolution a success and now we
should be sensible to help the president deliver the hopes and dreams of the
Revolution," said a young diplomat about what he considered as an explicit
warning by his boss.

"He added a few incoherent words about the national
role of the foreign service, its independence and so on; then he asked me to be
‘careful’ and not to confuse my role as a diplomat with that of an
activist."
According to this diplomat, who asked for his name to be withheld to spare
the disclosure of the identity of his boss, other young diplomats were given the
same warnings.

“One of them was told that his overt opposition to the
president would undermine his chances to go a good post and another was told
that the minister (of foreign affairs) is so angry with his ministry being
looked at as disloyal by the president,” the same diplomat added.
During the past few weeks, some diplomats have declined to bow to orders
issued by Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr to promote the president’s
political choices, Ahram Online has learnt......"

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

N Y Times

(Cartoon by Carlos Latuff)

"EARLIER this month, Aqeel Abdul Mohsen, 19, was shot
in the face for protesting against Bahrain’s government. He was covered in
blood, with the lower side of his face blown open, his jaw shattered, and a
broken hand hanging awkwardly from his wrist. It’s one of those images that you
wish you had never seen, and can never forget.

After more than 10 hours of surgery, and before Mr.
Abdul Mohsen regained consciousness, his hospital room was already under guard
by the police. Had he been able to speak, he might even have been interrogated
before going into surgery. Others have lain bleeding without medical attention
while government security agents asked questions like: “Were you participating
in a protest? Who else was with you?”

The oppressed people of Bahrain joined the Arab Spring
soon after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. With newfound hope,
Bahrainis took to the streets on Feb. 14, 2011. Rich and poor, Shiite and Sunni,
liberal and religious, they felt what it was like to speak freely for the first
time in the capital, Manama, at a traffic circle with a pearl monument at its
center. The Pearl Roundabout came to symbolize the Bahraini revolution.

Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff stands in solidarity with his Egyptian
counterpart Doaa El-Adl - who is to be questioned by the prosecutor general for
her latest cartoon on the constitution and MB regime

Ahram Online

"International political cartoonist Carlos Latuff has expressed solidarity with Egyptian
cartoonist Doaa El-Adl, who is being questioned by prosecutor general Talaat
Abdallah for critising Islamists in Egypt.

In his statement via Twitter, Latuff condemned the opression practiced
against artists and journalists in Egypt. "Solidarity with cartoonist Doaa
El-Adl who is charged with critising Islamists," he said.

Latuff drew the veiled Egyptian cartoonist holding her sharpened pencil like
a spear to defend her from the attack by an Islamist, which Latuff drew waving
his sword angrily at the young artist. "She is being harrassed by Islamists," he
added.

Published in Al Masry Al Youm on 20 December, El-Adl portrayed Adam and Eve
standing under the tree after they were kicked out of heaven because of their
vote in the referendum.
Next to them is a happy angel telling them in Arabic, "If you had voted yes
in this referendum the way I did, you would have enjoyed heaven." El-Adl's
recent piece had followed another with an Islamist inside the poll box kicking
out votes against the constitution......"

[Where are you Tawakkul Karman? Why are you totally Silent? Have they bought you with their Nobel Peace Prize? Just wondering.]

"Dhamar, Yemen — A rickety Toyota truck packed
with 14 people rumbled down a desert road from the town of Radda, which al-Qaeda
militants once controlled. Suddenly a missile hurtled from the sky and flipped
the vehicle over.

Chaos. Flames. Corpses. Then, a second missile struck.

Within seconds, 11 of the passengers were dead, including a woman and her
7-year-old daughter. A 12-year-old boy also perished that day, and another man
later died from his wounds.

The Yemeni government initially said that those killed were al-Qaeda
militants and that its Soviet-era jets had carried out the Sept. 2 attack. But
tribal leaders and Yemeni officials would later say that it was an American
assault and that all the victims were civilians who lived in a village near
Radda, in central Yemen. U.S. officials last week acknowledged for the first
time that it was an American strike....."

"A court in Saudi Arabia has decided to proceed with the prosecution of an online
activist for apostasy, a charge which carries the death penalty, in what Amnesty
International said is a new bid to stifle political and social debate.

On 22 December the General Court in Jeddah had Raif Badawi, 25, sign
documents to enable his trial on apostasy charges to go ahead, after his case
was passed to it by a District Court on 17 December.

Badawi – who
founded “Saudi Arabian Liberals”, a website for political and social debate –
has been in detention since June 2012 on charges including “setting up a website
that undermines general security” and ridiculing Islamic religious figures.

Amnesty International considers him to be a prisoner of conscience,
detained solely for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression.

“Even in Saudi Arabia where state repression is rife, it is beyond the
pale to seek the death penalty for an activist whose only ‘crime’ was to enable
social debate online,” said Philip Luther, Director of Amnesty Internationals
Middle East and North Africa Programme.

“Raif Badawi’s trial for
‘apostasy’ is a clear case of intimidation against him and others who seek to
engage in open debates about the issues that Saudi Arabians face in their daily
lives. He is a prisoner of conscience who must be released immediately and
unconditionally.”......"

"The Syrian government's former spokesman, Jihad Makdissi, is co-operating
with US intelligence officials who helped him flee to Washington almost one
month ago, the Guardian understands.

Makdissi became one of the
most prominent regime defectors in late November when he left Beirut after first
crossing from Syria. The
Guardian reported at the time that he had fled for the US, possibly in
return for asylum. This has now been confirmed.

The latest development comes after almost a month of debriefings, which have
helped intelligence officials build a picture of decision-making in the inner
sanctum of the embattled regime......"

CounterPunch"Israel’s large Palestinian minority is often spoken of in terms of the threat
it poses to the Jewish majority. Palestinian citizens’ reproductive rate
constitutes a “demographic timebomb”, while their main political programme –
Israel’s reform into “a state of all its citizens” – is proof for most Israeli
Jews that their compatriots are really a “fifth column”.

But who would imagine that Israeli Jews could be so intimidated by the
innocuous Christmas tree?
This issue first came to public attention two years ago when it was revealed
that Shimon Gapso, the mayor of Upper Nazareth, had banned Christmas trees from
all public buildings in his northern Israeli city.
“Upper Nazareth is a Jewish town and all its symbols are Jewish,” Gapso said.
“As long as I hold office, no non-Jewish symbol will be presented in the
city.”.....

Apart from Upper Nazareth, the only other “mixed” place where Palestinian
Christians are to be found in significant numbers is Haifa, Israel’s third
largest city. Haifa is often referred to as Israel’s most multicultural and
tolerant city, a title for which it faces very little competition.

But the image hides a dirtier reality. A recent letter from Haifa’s rabbinate
came to light in which the city’s hotels and events halls were reminded that
they must not host New Year’s parties at the end of this month (the Jewish New
Year happens at a different time of year). The hotels and halls were warned that
they would be denied their kashrut licences if they did so.

“It is a seriously forbidden to hold any event at the end of the calendar
year that is connected with or displays anything from the non-Jewish festivals,”
the letter states......."

"I write this essay from the heart of a grief-stricken nation. On December 14,
just a few days before millions of Americans were to gather under their
decorated holiday trees to celebrate Christmas, 26 people - 20 innocent young
students and six adults - were senselessly murdered at the Sandy Hook Elementary
School in Newtown, Connecticut, just under 80 miles or two hours' drive from
Manhattan where I live and where my children go to school.
Before driving to school to perpetrate this mass murder, the killer,
20-year-old Adam Peter Lanza, killed his own mother at their home. And after he
was done, Lanza killed himself.

A vastly pervasive culture of violence animates this country - from the
minutest aspects of its toy and entertainment industries all the way to the
militant imperialism that sustains its delusional fantasies to rule the world. A
myopic vision of this horrid crime at the Sandy Hook Elementary School will
leave the larger frame of reference criminally neglected. ...."

By Maysaloon

"When Seumus Milne writes article after article
lamenting the lack of 'dialogue' between the parties in Syria, he perpetuates a
myth that the Assad regime, along with its Russian and Iranian backers, has been
advocating a negotiated settlement all along. The truth could not be further
from the reality, and there is a real danger that the story of the Syrian
revolution is being re-spun into some nefarious Western plot to eliminate the
'last bastion of Arabism' as one anti-imperialist commentator described
it......

Syrians should rightly be concerned with the extremist elements within the ranks
of the rebels, but they do not need Milne to tell them that, and they certainly
don't need his instructions on the best way to remove the regime that has killed
tens of thousands of Syrians since last March. They should, also, be very
concerned with lawlessness and sectarianism, but unlike Milne they have
recognised that a state which mobilises its resources for mass murder and terror
over a population is far more disturbing and serious than the crimes of extreme
elements who are, after all, criminals anyway. Therefore, Milne has no right to
claim some kind of moral parity between 'two sides', and he certainly has no
right to paint the opponents of Assad, in all their colours and shapes, with the
same brush as al Qaeda. For Iraq and Afghanistan he has always been alert enough
to recognise the divide and rule tactics of an oppressor, or to know where one
must lay the blame when extremism results in atrocities and instability. No such
critical thinking appears to have been applied in Syria. In fact it does not
seem to have occurred to Milne and other Western anti-imperialist writers that
Assad, as an oppressor, is in the same boat as the imperialism they claim to
oppose."

"(Reuters)
- Standard & Poors' cut Egypt's long-term credit rating on Monday and said
another cut was possible if political turbulence worsened, undermining the
country's ability to make hard choices on public finances.
The agency reduced Egypt's long-term sovereign rating to 'B-' from 'B', but
left its short-term rating at 'B' for both foreign- and local-currency debt.
"The negative outlook reflects our view that a further downgrade is possible
if a significant worsening of the domestic political situation results in a
sharp deterioration of economic indicators such as foreign exchange reserves or
the government's deficit," S&P said."

"....Herzl's strategy continues to be the strategy of Zionism and the State of
Israel. Whereas state-sponsored anti-Semitism has disappeared, Israel must
create it and conjure it up, as this is its major line of defence against any
and all international criticisms and censure of its ongoing colonisation of
Palestine.
While the four permanent members of the UN Security Council censured Israel
last week for its plans to expand yet again its colonial settlements in the West
Bank and East Jerusalem, the US will surely veto a possible UN Security Council
resolution condemning these colonial activities. Should this happen, we will
immediately hear the Israeli and pro-Israeli chorus of condemnation of the
international body as "anti-Semitic" yet again.
That this strategy has now run its course and no longer intimidates
international actors has led to much panic in Zionist and Israeli circles.
Israel and Zionism now understand well that when the world, including the United
States (excepting Barack Obama), hears "anti-Semitism" as an argument to defend
Israel, they understand it as an Israeli diversionary tactic to distract the
world from Israeli Jewish colonialism and colonial-settlements
on Palestinian land.
Make no mistake about it, anti-Semitism in Israeli discourse is and has been
nothing short of camouflage for the continuation of Jewish colonisation of
Palestine. Only the gullible continue to be fooled. "

"(Reuters) - Dozens of people were killed and wounded in an air strike on a bakery
in Syria's central Hama province on Sunday, activists said, with some reporting
up to 200 dead.
"There is no way to really know yet how many people were killed. When I got
there, I could see piles of bodies all over the ground. There were women and
children," said Samer al-Hamawi, an activist in the town of Halfaya, where the
strike hit. "There are also dozens of wounded people"Halfaya was seized by rebels last week as part of a campaign to push into new
territories in the 21-month-old revolt against President Bashar
al-Assad,
Another activist said residents picking through the bodies were still
determining which were wounded and which were dead.
Hamawi, who spoke via Skype, uploaded a video of the scene, which showed
dozens of dust-coated bodies lined up near a pile of rubble by a concrete
building, its walls blackened.
The sounds of people screaming could be heard in the video, as some men
rushed to the scene on motorcycles and other residents limped away from the
area.
The authenticity of the video could not be immediately verified. The
government restricts media access in Syria.
Activists said more than a thousand people had been queuing at the bakery.
Shortages of fuel and flour have made bread production erratic across the
country, and people often wait for hours to buy bread.
New York-based Human Rights Watch condemned army air strikes on bakeries
earlier this year, arguing that in some incidents the military was not using
enough precision to target rebel sites and in other instances may have
intentionally hit civilians.
"We hadn't received flour in around three days so everyone was going to the
bakery today, and lots of them were women and children," Hamawi said. "I still
don't know yet if my relatives are among the dead.""

"It is a brave "new world" since Bouazizi ignited Tunisia - and literally the
Arab world - two years ago. In his footsteps has emerged a new breed of
vendor-like politician that hawks all kinds of creeds, ideas, myths and even
hope in the political "street".

In one sense, Tunisia's political peddlers have put the cart before the
horse, selling "wares" and "goods" in the absence of an overarching climate of
compromise, power-sharing, and professionalism.
The missing link in all of this is the consensual culture within which
politics has traditionally emerged and has been embedded. Today, the travails of
transition are more concrete than any verifiable outcomes, adding to popular
disillusionment across the board.

Three aspects manifest the trials and error of a still-promising transition
process, though with little or no correction of course yet in sight......

Where to?

With increased misery, aimlessness, and higher youth unemployment, in parts
as high as 30 percent and maybe above, the vendors of Tunisia will have hard
time buying loyalty, following and trust.
Like street peddlers, politicians across the political spectrum will need
more than verbal and rhetorical inducements and ornaments to embellish their
parties and convince Tunisians, namely the have-nots, to participate. For, so
far the return from the October 23 vote is minimal if not inexistent."